Cusco's central market — Mercado San Pedro. Afternoon sun slants through the gaps in the roof, and the air mingles spices and fruit and roasted corn. I stood in front of a stall selling alpaca sweaters. Sweaters with bright traditional patterns hung in rows.
At the next stall over, a group of Japanese tourists stood. Six or seven of them. Following a guide, taking photographs, talking among themselves in Japanese. Their faces wore the familiar expression of tourists — curiosity, mild fatigue, the easy comfort of being hidden behind a camera.
I am Korean. They are Japanese. We are all outsiders to this land. In Peru — on this highland where the descendants of the Inca live — we are all guests. Visitors from two neighboring nations in East Asia, several thousand kilometers away.
And then, in that moment, a strange awareness came over me.
They were connected to this continent before I was.
Five hundred years ago, in 1543 — when a Portuguese vessel drifted ashore on the Japanese island of Tanegashima — from that moment Japan was directly connected to the European colonial network. They received the matchlock musket. They received Christianity. They received the merchants. Fifty years later, in 1592, that same Japan appeared in the waters off Busan flying banners marked with the cross, and invaded Joseon.
I am a descendant of Joseon. These Japanese tourists are descendants of those invaders. And both of us — are part of a current of world history connected to the silver mined at Potosí 500 years ago. Because the wealth that made the Imjin War possible — in significant part — came from Japan's Iwami silver mine, and the technology of that Iwami mine was built on a lead-silver separation method leaked out of Joseon.
While Indigenous laborers in Potosí were dying of mercury poisoning on one side of the earth, on the other side of the earth Joseon's craftsmen were being sold into Japan. And these two currents — met on the Korean peninsula's coast in 1592.
I thought a long time before writing this paragraph. To be sure this connection was fact. To verify there was historical ground for it. To check whether it was an emotional projection or a real chain of events. Verification was possible. This chapter is the result of that verification.
The Imjin War is not an internal East Asian event. It was the Korean peninsula's blow from the first wave of globalization that began with Columbus in 1492. This proposition is the spine of this chapter.
For Korean readers this chapter holds particular weight. When we learned about the Imjin War in school, we learned it as a binary event — "Japan invaded Joseon." This binary is accurate, but incomplete. It was the expression of a far larger structure. And once you see that structure, it becomes clear that the Imjin War still continues to shape present-day Korea.
I bought a sweater at the market. The vendor said it had been hand-woven by a Quechua woman. Her fingers passed the sweater to me. I passed her the money. I now know that this small exchange — was a small fragment of a vast world economic system that has been linked together for five hundred years.
To prove the claim of this chapter, we first have to look at the chain of events that took place during the hundred years from 1492 to 1592. Not a simple list. A causal chain in which each event becomes the condition for the next.
These hundred years are a single story.
Compressed into a single causal chain:
Each step in the chain made the next possible. Without Columbus there is no Potosí; without Potosí there is no global silver market; without the Japanese silver mines there is no European musket purchase; without the muskets there is no Hideyoshi's military power; without Hideyoshi's military power there is no Imjin War.
The Imjin War is the first wave of globalization detonating on the Korean peninsula. There is no longer ground to doubt this claim.
In the summer of 1543 (or 1542), a Chinese junk carrying Portuguese merchants drifted onto Tanegashima (種子島), a small island south of Kyushu, Japan.¹ It was driven there by a storm. Among the Portuguese aboard were António da Mota, Francisco Zeimoto, and António Peixoto.
Among the items they showed to the local lord Tanegashima Tokitaka (種子島時堯) was — a matchlock arquebus (火縄銃). This was the first firearm ever introduced to Japan.²
Tokitaka recognized the military value of this weapon at once. He purchased two of the guns from the Portuguese — for, the story goes, the staggering price of a thousand taels of gold. Then he ordered the master gunsmith of his domain, Yaita Kinbei (八板金兵衛), to replicate the weapon.
Yaita disassembled the gun and reassembled it, studying its construction. Most of the structure could be replicated. But there was one problem. The screw plug sealing the breech of the barrel could not be unscrewed. Without unscrewing it the barrel could not be cleaned and the principle could not be understood.
According to the tradition — the historicity of which is doubtful but which carries cultural symbolism — Yaita decided to marry his own daughter Wakasa (若狭) to the Portuguese merchant. In return he obtained the technique for the breech screw. Wakasa boarded the ship and left with the Portuguese merchant. Or, in some chronicles, after a sham marriage she returned home with the technique alone.³ Either way — within a year, Yaita succeeded in fully replicating the gun.
From there, the Japanese replication and production of muskets expanded at astonishing speed. Yaita's technique was passed to other craftsmen. Sakai (堺, near Osaka), Kunitomo (國友, in Shiga Prefecture), Hino (日野), and other regions across Japan became centers of musket production.⁴
Within fifty years — by around 1590 — Japan had become the world's largest producer and user of matchlock muskets. Exact figures are hard to fix, but various estimates put the number of muskets in Japan at this period at between 300,000 and 500,000. More than the total in all of contemporary continental Europe.⁵
Why did Japan absorb the musket so quickly? At the time Japan was in the Sengoku period (戦国時代, 1467–1600). An era of internal war in which roughly a hundred regional daimyo fought ceaselessly. Each daimyo was prepared to adopt any technology that could secure military advantage. The musket was decisive. It was a weapon that neutralized samurai swordsmanship.
The Battle of Nagashino in 1575 stands as the symbol. Oda Nobunaga (織田信長)'s coalition of western daimyo used three thousand muskets in a three-rank rotating volley formation to crush the traditional cavalry of Takeda Katsuyori (武田勝頼).⁶ This battle is recorded as the paradigm shift in Japanese military history. The musket did not defeat the spear and sword as such; rather, an industrial system of weapons production defeated an artisanal tradition of martial skill.
Nobunaga drove this transition; Toyotomi Hideyoshi (豊臣秀吉) inherited it. And after unifying Japan, Hideyoshi looked for the next target of conquest. His choice was Joseon and Ming China.
Joseon was aware of the existence of the musket. Around 1589 there is a record of two muskets being presented to the Joseon court from Tsushima.⁷ But the Joseon court underestimated the decisive significance of this weapon. There were several reasons.
First, Joseon's lack of war experience. After its founding (1392), Joseon went two hundred years without a major war. Aside from small-scale Jurchen incursions in the north. There was the problem of Japanese pirates, but no full-scale war. This long peace weakened any urgency about military innovation.
Second, Confucian civil supremacy. In Joseon society, military officials were ranked below civil officials. Investment and interest in military technology innovation were lacking. The musket was treated as "the work of artisans," and the senior decision-makers at court were slow to grasp its strategic meaning.
Third, a tradition centered on artillery. Since the reign of Sejong, Joseon had developed cannon technology on its own. Cheonja chongtong, jija chongtong, hyeonja chongtong, hwangja chongtong, and other cannons of various calibers existed. Joseon's military tradition was centered on large cannon, not on personal small arms. This tradition delayed the adoption of the musket.
Yet — and this is decisive — Joseon's artillery technology was by no means inferior to Japan's. Especially in naval cannon, Joseon was outstanding. This explains the outcome of the naval battles of the Imjin War.
The Japanese army landed in the waters off Busan in April 1592. About 158,000 troops. A high proportion of musketeers. In land battles, the Joseon army was overwhelmed by Japanese firepower. Busan fell. On April 30, Seoul fell. In just twenty days. By May, Pyongyang was in danger, and King Seonjo fled all the way to Uiju.⁸
At sea, however, an entirely different story unfolded.
Yi Sun-sin (이순신, 李舜臣, 1545–1598). Naval Commander of Jeolla Left Province. The record of the Joseon navy he led against the Japanese navy became a legend in world naval history.
May 1592, Battle of Okpo: Yi Sun-sin's first victory. 26 Japanese ships destroyed.
June 1592, Battle of Sacheon: First use of the turtle ship.
July 1592, Battle of Hansando: Using the crane-wing formation (haikjin), 59 of the Japanese fleet's 73 ships destroyed. The turning point of the Imjin War.
September 1597, Battle of Myeongnyang: With only 13 panokseon, decisive victory against a Japanese fleet of 133 ships. A miracle of world naval history.⁹
Yi Sun-sin's success had several reasons. Outstanding tactical sense. Strict discipline. A character that earned the respect of his men. But there was a technological foundation. It rested on the two weapons of the Joseon navy.
Panokseon (板屋船): Joseon's main warship. A two-tiered ship with a separate structure (panok) erected above the deck. Elevated firing platforms. Compared to the flat-decked Japanese warships, it was superior in angle of cannon fire and stability. Its hull itself was sturdier — giving it the advantage in ramming engagements as well.
Turtle ship (geobukseon, 龜船): A specialized warship that Yi Sun-sin deployed in actual combat. A roof was laid over the deck, with iron plates or iron spikes set on top to prevent enemy boarding. Cannon on all four sides. A dragon's-head muzzle in front. It was used as a shock vessel in the early phase of an engagement to break the enemy's formation.¹⁰
And on these two ships, the cannon. The large Joseon cannon system mentioned above. The cheonja chongtong had a range of roughly 300 to 500 meters. Far in excess of the Japanese musket's range of 100 to 200 meters. When the distance was sufficient, the Joseon navy overpowered the Japanese navy by firepower.
That is, in the naval engagements of the Imjin War, Joseon's victory was not a miracle but a technological advantage. The popular notion that Joseon's science and technology lagged behind Japan's is inaccurate. In some fields — especially naval and artillery technology — Joseon was at world-class level.
This victory reversed the entire strategic direction of the Imjin War. The Japanese army could no longer keep its troops supplied on the peninsula. Their supply lines were cut. They could not hold the territory they had taken. Meanwhile Ming reinforcements arrived (1593), and irregular militias (uibyeong) and warrior monks (seungbyeong) rose up. The war turned protracted, and finally ended in 1598 when Japan withdrew following Hideyoshi's death.
Did Joseon win? The question is not simple. The land was scorched. The population dropped. Skilled craftsmen were carried off in great numbers. Cultural treasures were burned (Gyeongbokgung among them). But the state survived. The dynasty endured. This is a different result from what the Inca civilization went through.
Chapter 14 will analyze this difference in detail. Here it is enough to remember — that the victory of the Joseon navy was the product of Joseon's science and technology. And that one part of that science and technology was Joseon's silver-refining technique — which, by a cruel irony, had crossed to Japan and supplied the funds for this very invasion.
One of the most fascinating figures of the Imjin War is Konishi Yukinaga (小西行長, 1558–1600). Commander of the First Division of the Japanese army. Vanguard of the landing at Busan. But to see him simply as "a Japanese general" is to miss something. He was a Catholic.¹¹
Begin with Konishi's family background. His father Konishi Ryūsaburō (小西立佐) was originally a merchant from Sakai. A merchant class that had grown wealthy through trade with Ming China. He met Portuguese Catholic missionaries, was baptized, and had his children baptized as well. Yukinaga's baptismal name was Agostinho.
His mother Wakusa (若狭, baptismal name Magdalena) was a devout Catholic. Yukinaga grew up in a Catholic household.
In late sixteenth-century Japan there were several such Kirishitan daimyo (Christian lords). They were especially numerous in Kyushu — Ōtomo Sōrin, Ōmura Sumitada, Arima Harunobu, and others. They pursued at once the influence of Portuguese missionaries and the profits of European trade. By the 1580s the number of Christian believers across Japan is estimated to have reached 300,000.¹² In a country of about 12 million, that is 2.5 percent. Not a negligible proportion.
Konishi Yukinaga belonged to this current. Some of the banners of his army carried the red cross.¹³ Many Japanese Catholic soldiers served in his army. And — most astonishing of all — European missionaries traveled with him as well.
Gregorio de Céspedes (1551–1611). Born in Madrid, Spain. A Jesuit priest. He was the first European to set foot on Korean soil.¹⁴
Céspedes arrived in Japan in 1577 and conducted missionary work there for more than ten years. He spoke Japanese fluently and won the trust of the Kirishitan community. He was particularly close to Konishi Yukinaga.
When the Imjin War began — Konishi's camp had several problems. One of them was the spiritual care of his Christian soldiers. There were no priests on the Korean peninsula. Confession, Mass, last rites — none could be received. Returning temporarily to Japan was impossible. So Konishi requested — that a priest be sent to the front.
The Jesuit Provincial of Japan dispatched Céspedes. With him came the Japanese brother Han Kan Leon. The two arrived at the Japanese camp at Ungcheon (熊川, present-day Jinhae) in late December 1593 or early January 1594.¹⁵
Céspedes was active in Joseon for about a year. His activity was confined mainly to the interior of the Japanese camp. He celebrated the sacraments for Japanese Catholic soldiers. He offered funeral Masses for the fallen. He sent letters back to his superiors in Manila — some of which survive today and convey his experience on the peninsula.
One of his letters begins:
"In 1594, I arrived at the harbor of Komakura (Joseon), not far from Japan. The cold here is far worse than in Japan. The wind blows from the continent. At night our hands and feet freeze and we cannot turn the pages of the Bible."¹⁶
These sentences in which he describes the climate and landscape of the Korean peninsula — are the first direct record left by a European of the Korean peninsula. But he scarcely met any Joseon civilians. He worked only inside the Japanese camp. The object of his mission was the Japanese army, not the people of Joseon.
This is, in a way, one of history's ironies. The first European Christian to set foot in Joseon — did not bring the gospel to the people of Joseon, but celebrated the sacraments for the invading army. Christianity in Joseon began without any relation to Céspedes — two hundred years later, in the late eighteenth century, in the reign of King Jeongjo, by way of Beijing. Céspedes's visit left no trace on the religious history of Joseon.
Yet there is a structural parallel. Across sixty years.
In Chapter 6 I reconstructed the afternoon of November 16, 1532, in Cajamarca. When Pizarro entered the Inca plaza with 168 men, beside him was the Dominican friar Vicente de Valverde. Valverde stood before Atahualpa with the breviary in hand. He read out the "Requirement," and when Atahualpa dropped the book, Valverde proclaimed "blasphemy." The massacre began moments later.
Pizarro–Valverde. The pairing of military commander and friar. The fusion of conquest and mission.
Konishi–Céspedes. A Japanese general and a Jesuit priest. The fusion of the invasion of Joseon and mission.
Sixty years apart. On the opposite side of the world. Yet the structure is identical.
This is no coincidence. It was the standard composition of European colonial military expeditions in the sixteenth century. A clergyman travels with the army. Conquest is itself the opportunity for mission, and mission is itself the justification for conquest. What Pizarro and Valverde did was repeated in the Caribbean, repeated in the Philippines, repeated in Japan, and now — slightly altered in form — repeated on the Korean peninsula.
Of course, Céspedes did not come to Joseon to evangelize Joseon. His purpose was the spiritual care of Japanese soldiers. But his very presence is evidence — that the European colonial network had reached the Korean peninsula. Japan was connected to the Portuguese-Spanish Catholic world, and that connection had extended a finger as far as the coast of Joseon.
And — crucially — the fact that Konishi's army could be armed with muskets was thanks to fifty years of weapons trade with Portuguese merchants. That weapons trade was paid for in Japanese silver. And a substantial portion of that silver — was mined using technology from Joseon.
Trace this chain and it becomes clear that the Imjin War was not a simple Korea–Japan war. It was the explosive intersection on the Korean peninsula of European imperialism, the Catholic network, the global silver economy, and East Asian internal politics.
Now I have to tell the darkest story in this chapter. The leak of Joseon's silver-refining technology to Japan. Without this leak, Japan would not have become a major silver producer, and the Imjin War would not have been funded.
In 1503, the ninth year of King Yeonsangun of Joseon, two men who were not yangban but rather middle-class or commoner technicians — Kim Gam-bul (김감불, 金甘佛) and Kim Geom-dong (김검동, 金儉同) — developed a new method of refining silver.¹⁷ This is what is called the lead-silver separation method (yeoneun-bulli-beop, 鉛銀分離法), also known by the Chinese term cupellation (haechwi-beop, 灰吹法).
The technique was revolutionary. A way of separating only the silver from ore in which lead and silver were mixed. The principle is as follows.
This method could produce silver of far higher purity than traditional methods. And the processing speed was faster as well. The technique was reported to the Joseon court, and Yeonsangun took an interest. Trial production was carried out at sites such as the Dancheon silver mine.
But — the Joseon court hesitated to adopt this technology on a large scale. There were several reasons.¹⁸
First, diplomatic friction with China. If Joseon's silver production grew significantly, it was feared that Ming China's demand for silver tribute would also grow. An increase in tribute payments.
Second, fear of social disruption. A conservative judgment that easy silver production might destabilize social and economic order. The Confucian view of society — agriculture as the proper occupation, commerce as merely auxiliary — was at work.
Third, wariness toward the technician class. The lead-silver separation method had been developed by middle-class and commoner technicians. The Joseon yangban elite was reluctant to see their status rise.
And so Joseon did not actively develop this technology. In some periods it even banned it. Silver mining was halted, and the technicians lost their work.
It was here that the decisive event occurred.
Around 1533, two Korean technicians — Jong Kim-ju Jo (宗旨朝) and Geumjeok (金跡), or other names depending on the source — were taken to Japan by the Japanese merchant Kamiya Jutei (神谷寿禎).¹⁹ They taught the lead-silver separation method to the silver-mine technicians of Iwami (石見) in Japan.
The exact circumstances are reconstructed differently by different scholars. Some say it was a voluntary migration. Some say it was an abduction or purchase. It is a fact that there was semi-official human traffic between Joseon and Japan at the time, and that craftsmen sometimes went to Japan in search of better treatment.
Whatever the reason — the result is clear. After 1533, the production of Japan's Iwami silver mine exploded. By a factor of tens. And the technique spread from Iwami across Japan.
The Iwami silver mine (石見銀山) is in Shimane Prefecture in western Japan. Small-scale mining had existed there since the twelfth century, but after the lead-silver separation method arrived — production began on an entirely different scale.²⁰
By the mid-sixteenth century, Iwami accounted for about one-third of world silver production. After Potosí, it was the most important silver source. The exact figures:
Where did this silver go? To China. Portuguese merchants in Japan sold this silver to Ming China. In return they took Chinese silk, porcelain, and weapons. Some of it was concentrated in the hands of domestic political power. Toyotomi Hideyoshi in particular accumulated his wealth through this silver.
That is, Iwami silver = the purchase of military technology through Portuguese trade + domestic political funds. Together, these two uses became the decisive resource for militarily unifying Japan and arming it with European-style war technology.
And — at the foundation of all this stood Joseon's lead-silver separation method.
Joseon's technology came back as the funds for the weapons that invaded Joseon.
The weight of this sentence has to be felt.
In 1503, Kim Gam-bul and Kim Geom-dong developed the lead-silver separation method. Joseon did not put this technology to use. It even suppressed it. In 1533 the technicians went to Japan. Japan's Iwami silver mine grew to global scale. Japan used this silver to buy Portuguese muskets. Japan was unified internally. Hideyoshi rose. In 1592, the musket army armed by that silver landed in the waters off Busan. The guns they carried had come from Europe, and the money that had bought those guns from Europe — was silver made by a technology Joseon had thrown away.
This chain is one of the cruelest ironies in history. The treasure Joseon failed to guard came back, sixty years later, as the blade that struck Joseon.
And the lesson of this story is profoundly modern. If a country does not value its own technology, another country will take it. And that technology — can even become the weapon that attacks it. One of the reasons twentieth- and twenty-first-century Korea is so sensitive to technology protection and technological self-reliance may be that this sixteenth-century experience — somewhere in the collective unconscious — still remains.
Now we can summarize this chapter's central argument. Let us list the elements of the world system at work in the Imjin War.
1. Portugal's maritime expansion. The introduction of muskets and Christianity to Japan.
2. American silver. The reorganization of the Asian economy through the Manila galleon. The backdrop that made the Ming silver-based fiscal system possible.
3. Ming China's silver demand. Economic transformation across all of East Asia. This demand legitimized European capital's investment in Japanese silver production.
4. Japanese silver production. The explosive growth of the Iwami mine, made possible by the leak of Joseon's lead-silver separation method.
5. Internal political integration of Japan. The Nobunaga-Hideyoshi unification at the end of the centuries-long Sengoku civil wars. The problem of disposing of the surplus military force that this unification created.
6. The Christian network. The Jesuit advance into Asia and the military strength of the Kirishitan daimyo. The Konishi-Céspedes pairing.
7. Joseon's lack of war preparation. The side effect of two hundred years of peace. The underestimation of the musket.
All these elements detonated on the Korean peninsula.
The Imjin War is not an internal East Asian event. Japan did not simply invade out of nowhere. It was the result of decades of accumulated planetary flows of capital, technology, and religion concentrated on the Korean peninsula. And the starting point of those flows was Columbus in 1492.
What does this reading mean for Korean readers?
We have remembered the Imjin War as a history of passive victimhood. Japan suddenly invaded; we endured; we won, or we survived. This narrative is not inaccurate, but it is incomplete. It places Joseon as an outsider to world history. As if Joseon were an isolated kingdom unconnected to the world.
But Joseon was not an outsider to globalization. From the early 1500s onward, Joseon was already part of the world silver system. Joseon's technology flowed to Japan. Joseon's envoys went to Ming China, and through Ming China made indirect contact with European goods and information. Joseon too, in a small way, was an actor in the first globalization.
And the Imjin War was — the event in which Joseon directly experienced the violence of this world system for the first time. Until then, Joseon had been at the relatively peaceful periphery of the world system. After 1592 — it became the site of a direct strike.
This experience was carved deep into Joseon's collective memory. The four hundred years of Korean history that followed — the Manchu invasions, the opening of the ports, the Japanese colonial period, liberation and division, the Korean War, developmental dictatorship, democratization — all are a continuous response to the shock that the first wave of globalization brought.
One thing must be made clear. This reading does not stoke anti-Japanese sentiment. On the contrary, it offers a new perspective on Japan as well.
Japan, too, was both an active participant in this system and a victim of it. Japanese peasants were forcibly mobilized for Hideyoshi's war. Many Japanese soldiers died on the Korean peninsula. The war shook Japan's internal politics as well (after Hideyoshi's death in 1598, the Battle of Sekigahara → the establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate). Japan's Christians were later persecuted (the seventeenth-century Kirishitan persecutions).
And the European technology and religion that Japan absorbed — set Japan on the orbit of modernization, but at the same time planted in it the desire of modern colonialism. From the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, this desire turned Japan into the invader of other countries in East Asia. The harm inflicted on Joseon, Taiwan, China, Southeast Asia. Japan itself, at the terminus of this trajectory, experienced atomic bombs and occupation.
That is — the violence Japan inflicted on Joseon is not a peculiar evil belonging to Japan. It is the result of Wetiko operating through Japan. The same Wetiko operated through Europe upon the Americas, through Britain upon India, and in the twentieth century through the United States upon Southeast Asia. Wetiko does not choose nations. It blooms wherever its conditions are met.
This perspective is liberating for Koreans as well. If we read our own narrative of victimhood not only as national grievance but as the product of a world-historical structure — our attitude toward the future shifts as well. There is no need for resentment toward Japan (what is needed is recognition of historical fact). What is needed is a critical distance from the Wetiko system itself.
This perspective makes possible — in Chapter 14 — the comparison of three civilizations: Inca, Joseon, and Cree. All three civilizations were struck by the wave of Wetiko. The results differed. Why they differed is the question of Chapter 14.
After buying the alpaca sweater at the market, I stepped outside. The sun was sinking. On the way back to my lodging through Cusco's narrow alleys. The long shadows of late afternoon fell across the cobblestones.
Where did the Japanese tourists go, I wondered. Probably they had bought their souvenirs at another stall and gone for dinner. Koreans and Japanese pass each other in the markets of Cusco. Between us is shared history. Shared wounds and shared responsibility. And shared connection — running back five hundred years.
Few Koreans are aware of this connection. Few Japanese are aware of it. Both sides see each other only as citizens of a neighboring state. Through one of two lenses — nationalist resentment, or nationalist superiority.
But — both of us are inside a larger wave. A wave that began on the Atlantic five hundred years ago and crossed the Pacific. The Indigenous people of Potosí and the Caribbean slaves and the Kirishitan of Japan and the people of Joseon — all of our ancestors were part of this wave. Some were inside the wave; some were swept aside by it. But none stood outside it.
This recognition — makes possible, I believe, a new form of solidarity beyond nationalist boundaries. Just as Koreans and Japanese share a history, Koreans and the Indigenous peoples of Peru share a history. Japanese and Filipinos, Japanese and Vietnamese, Japanese and Chinese each share a history. If we read all these connections only through the simple aggressor-victim frame — we cannot move forward.
Instead — the recognition that we were all part of the Wetiko system. The recognition that this system must be overcome together. This is the gaze required in the twenty-first century. Koreans, Japanese, Chinese, Southeast Asians, Indigenous Americans, Africans — caught up in this system through different routes, but in the end, different expressions of the same system.
But — having been struck by the same wave does not mean the destinies were the same. Some civilizations were swept away by the wave. Some, wounded, survived. Some escaped total annihilation but bore deep wounds.
In the next chapter we compare the destinies of three civilizations. Inca. Joseon. And — the Cree of the Canadian plains, with whom I have lived close for sixteen years.
All three civilizations were struck by the wave of Wetiko. The results differed. Why?
This question carries the book to its emotional climax.
And in the chapter that follows — the personal story I have hinted at from the very beginning of this book will naturally come into view. My sister Debbie. Maskwacis. Montana First Nation. The mission and community visits, almost every year for ten days at a time, from 1997 to 2013. Within that long companionship, the story of a Korean received as kin into a single family, bearing witness from beside three civilizations.
The whole book has been walking toward this moment. The next chapter.
¹ The date of the introduction of the matchlock to Tanegashima differs by source between 1542 and 1543. This book follows the majority view of 1543. Olof G. Lidin, Tanegashima: The Arrival of Europe in Japan (Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2002).
² Ibid., chapter 2.
³ The story of Yaita Kinbei and his daughter Wakasa appears in some Japanese tradition, but historical confirmation is limited. Lidin (2002), chapter 3.
⁴ On the expansion of the Japanese musket industry, see Noel Perrin, Giving Up the Gun: Japan's Reversion to the Sword, 1543–1879 (Boston: David R. Godine, 1979).
⁵ Estimates of the number of Japanese muskets at the end of the sixteenth century are in ibid., chapter 1.
⁶ On the Battle of Nagashino, see Stephen Turnbull, Nagashino 1575: Slaughter at the Barricades (Oxford: Osprey, 2000).
⁷ On the gift of two muskets from Tsushima to Joseon in 1589, see Veritable Records of the Joseon Dynasty, Seonjo, 22nd year, seventh month.
⁸ On the early military situation of the Imjin War, see Samuel Hawley, The Imjin War: Japan's Sixteenth-Century Invasion of Korea and Attempt to Conquer China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005).
⁹ On Yi Sun-sin's major naval engagements, see Lee Min-woong, Naval History of the Imjin War (Seoul: Cheongeoram Media, 2004).
¹⁰ On the panokseon and turtle ship, see Lee Won-sik, Korean Ships (Seoul: Daewonsa, 1990).
¹¹ On the life of Konishi Yukinaga, see Song Sang-hyeon, "Reassessing Konishi Yukinaga," Yeoksa Bipyeong (Autumn 2005).
¹² Estimates of the number of Christians in sixteenth-century Japan from George Elison, Deus Destroyed: The Image of Christianity in Early Modern Japan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973).
¹³ On the Christian symbolism of Konishi's army, see Hawley (2005), chapter 2.
¹⁴ On the life of Gregorio de Céspedes and his visit to the Korean peninsula, see Park Cheol, Céspedes: The First Westerner to Visit Korea (Seoul: Sogang University Press, 1993).
¹⁵ On Céspedes's arrival at Ungcheon, see ibid., chapter 3.
¹⁶ Céspedes's letters have been translated and quoted by various researchers. The quotation in the body is the author's composite translation.
¹⁷ On the development of the lead-silver separation method, see Veritable Records of the Joseon Dynasty, Yeonsangun, 9th year (1503), fifth month.
¹⁸ On the reasons Joseon did not actively use the lead-silver separation method, see Lee Tae-jin, "The Expansion of East Asian International Trade in the 16th Century and Joseon's Response," Hanguksaron 43 (2000): 1–47.
¹⁹ On the leak of Korean technicians to Japan around 1533, see ibid., and on the Japanese side, Sonoda Ichirō, History of the Iwami Silver Mine (石見銀山史, Tokyo, 1974).
²⁰ On the history of the Iwami silver mine, see Tamura Umeo, The Iwami Silver Mine (石見銀山, Tokyo: National Museum of Japanese History, 2007).
²¹ Estimates of Iwami silver production are in ibid., and in Dennis O. Flynn and Arturo Giráldez, "Born with a 'Silver Spoon': The Origin of World Trade in 1571," Journal of World History 6, no. 2 (1995): 201–221.